By Sand, Wind and Mare's Milk

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A seven kilometer stretch of no man's land separated us from Mongolia. No man's land indeed for only fuel powered engine were allowed through - no walking, no cycling. We loaded our bikes onto an already packed jeep and scrambled in, me in a gentleman's lap, Cedric hanging on the door while steadying an inch of his butt on the tiny dashboard. The jeep was filled to capacity with boxes that held electric appliances - radiators, micro wave ovens, vacuum cleaners but mainly small assemble yourself radiators. It once again reminded us that winter was descending on the World's coldest capital and we would be in time to see it taxiing in. Outside the wind raged on, leftovers from the previous day that brought bitter cold winds and Gobi sands that swept through Ereen, upsetting public bins and tossing street litter like candy floss. Street sellers took a break that day.

I was worried, the few kilometers of cycling towards the border gates had been a real challenge with the wind bearing down on us from the North west continuously pushing my bike out of course. Sand scraped my sunglasses leaving tiny scratches on the lens. My face was well protected with a balaclava that left only my eyes uncovered. I was breathing heavily with the effort. It wasn't a pleasant day but I had to notice locals taking it in their stride. They turned their collars up, wore face masks and went about briskly with their work as usual. It gave me some inspiration and I pedalled on having to stop occasionally to manually steer my bike back on course.

A last confrontation with another ignoramus from the great Chinese bureaucratic setup was the final farewell to Chinese soil. The idiot tried to confiscate Cedric's French made Laguiole knife after sniffing and ripping open our bag of milkpowder to taste it. An impatient Mongolian fellow passenger couldn't help but tease him by saying "coke! coke! arrest them so we can continue". He finally settled on the knife and pocketed it. I reminded him it was an exit point not a flight boarding point and the knife was French made. We eventually took the matter to higher officials who agreed it wasn't a confiscate-able item. Sigh!!

Zamin-Ud on the Mongolian side was like an old wild-west frontier town. Wooden buildings slung low among the odd concrete blocks and none of the gaudy trappings of mid-way Chinese cities trying to look grand. It was stepping back in time but we welcomed it. The wind continued to howl through the town. We stepped into our first Mongolan restaurant and were plesantly surprised with the semi-western set up. Tablecloth and tableware more familiar to Westerners, forks, spoons and plates. Not one bowl and chopstick in sight. The menu was mainly salad drench in mayonnaise and different kins of meat and rice. Goulash has become my staple diet - Beef or muttion in a thick gravy/sauce on a bed of mashed potato and rice. Apart from fried noodles and buzz (huge momos or baozhi) and Kushuur (meat stuffed deep fried bread), meat and rice in various forms and a few soups with meat again and potatoes and carrots is the staple menu of all restaurants.

A quick trip to a supermarket revealed row after row of imported food. Most were from Europe with pickled vegetables, canned meat, sausages and pasta dressings taking up much of the aisles. I noted absolutely none of the colorful weird plastic packages of Chinese products. This was already hinting an insight into what the Mongolians think of the Chinese. We also found good baked bread loaves after a long long time.

We decided to brave the wind and sand and head out after a quick lunch. A little nervous about the weather and prospects of finding water we chose to take the advice of a Swiss family traveling in their huge luxurious camping van. They had come in from Ulaanbaatar on their way to China and claimed the road ahead was void of people and water for at least 200 km. They didn't cross many of the villages marked on out map; places where we'd hope to stock up on water. Their worry for us made us quite nervous. Finally we took their advice to stick parallel to the railway line.

It was hopeless. Mongolia's vast plains are littered with dirt tracks. With absolutely no official roadway one has to have a good bearing and a compass. A GPS is usually listed on the must have lists for solo travelling in Mongolia but we decided it was too big a budget. A good map and an inbuilt sense of direction with a compass was good enough to tackle the Gobi. Following a track is not a real option as there are dozens. This is one place where people really make their own road. But eventually we found that often many tracks merged at some point or the other as long you kept to the right direction. Picking the right one to cut short distance was the real challenge. But that we discovered only after a day of floundering in the sand drenched track that lay parallel to the railway.

We spent our first evening battling both sand in the heavy wind and sand below our tires. 2 hours of painful heaving brought us 11 km away from Zamin-ud before it was time to think of camping. Luckily we found an old abandoned building as our tent wouldn't quite have survived the onslaught of the wind. A ger lay nearby and it's owner invited us in the moment he saw us in the distance. He poured us tea or what they call tea - milk with salt and maybe sometimes a few strands of tealeaves, and invited us to spend the night if we wished. Insight No.2 into Mongolians. They are much better at mime and sign language than Chinese.

In China people often solve the problem of you not understanding them but either 1) shouting louder and SLOWER (let's give them us credit for the effort) into your ear or 2) Writing down what they said in Hanzi, the Mandarin Chinese script. There are socio-historical reasons for N0.2 but I won't elaborate. On the other hand we could almost hold a conversation with the man. We declined his offer as it would mean extra effort to socialize while dead tired and imposing on his already tiny ger. So we camped inside the abandoned wreck of the house instead. Not the best but at least sheltered from the wind.

Day 2 of our effort was no better, slithering. slipping, sliding and straining through the sand. The extra 10 litre water bag I was carrying didn't help. Thankfully the wind had slowed down and the sun shone bright. After my umpteenth fall and realizing how slow our progress was I suggested we try to move towards the main transit route. We could see the tiny dust clouds of trucks in the far distance. We guessed correctly that the more often used roads would be easier to manage as traffic dislodged much of the sand in their track. By late evening we were on what must be the main highway and while still littered with sandy pockets, there were options to avoid them. I couldn't help but fume a bit at the well meant but ill-informed advice we'd taken. We also crossed quite a bit of traffic and at least two nomad ger camps before evening. Once again I had to remind myself - when traveling by bicycle don't always trust the information provided by people who rip through with their engines missing much of the detail of the road.

Ced and I had our first real quarrel over the amount of water I drank. He was strung out by the mis-information that there was no water for a good 100 km and snapped at me when I took a long swig from his bottle (mine already depleted). We were carrying more than 15 litres of water between us and I saw no reason to hold back my thirst and yelled back. A minor spat issued and a heavy session of sulking followed while setting up camp. I was sure to reach Erdene the next day but he remained skeptical as this was one of the villages the Swiss family never passed and presumed it could possibly not really exist.

More tough cycling with an average of 9.1km/hr and all of this on more or less flat ground. It was frustrating knowing we could be at double the speed if not for the wind and sand. We did find Erdene and decided to camp with it in sight as we still had water for the night. It looked rather big with at least 60 houses scattered around the village.

Next morning we rattled down to the village only to find shops still closed. We asked a passing lady where the restaurant was and were invited home to her place instead. We still don't know if there was or wasn't a restaurant in town but we were happy for the diversion as her 11 year old son entertained us thoroughly prattling on incessantly and helping us pick up a few Mongolia phrases. It took a while to be fed as the lady first made tea and slowly proceed to put together ingredients for a beautiful thick soup with pork, turnips, carrots, onions and rice. In between we communicated with halting words from our phrase book and pictionary doodles. It was 12 by the time we left. We still managed to cycle 48 km as wind was an almost 0, just the day we get delayed by our kind host but we were happy for it.

By now we were confident about finding food and water at regular intervals. I wonder what all the Swiss family might have missed for in about 55 km from Erdene we reached Orgon, another little village with a well stocked grocery shop and pump house for replenishing water supply. It was great to meet an Armenian mine worker who had been living in Mongolia for over 10 years. Somehow despite not seeing people for miles around once we did come across small pockets of people living in the middle of the Gobi there always was a cosmopolitan air hovering around. People seemed more used to seeing foreigners and travellers didn't seem to be as much of a curious novelty. It might have something to do with their nomadic roots and mind set.

Syanshand or Sainshand is the provincial capital of this area of the Gobi and the biggest town in these parts. While it still has the air of a desolate frontier town there are busy markets and several supermarkets stocked full of food that one can only see in the most upmarket stores of China. There does seem to a new air of wealth sweeping over Mongolia as more and more people abandon their herding lifestyle to find work in the many mines springing up all over the country. A couple of years ago finding food and water was the biggest challenge for travelers here with repeated warnings of how poor the food in Mongolia was but we seemed to have arrived in time at least as far as food was concerned.

Distances are still long across the Gobi and tiring. However good a track may be for a while it still lapses back into terrible bumps and ruts and sandy pockets that wipe out all your energy. The most we made on a really good day was 58 km. That was the evening before Sainshand. But this would soon change for there will finally be a highway running through the Gobi and once covered with tar vehicles will be zipping on them and cyclists might just be offered some respite from the tough dirt tracks as well. But for now only a skeleton of the project is visible. The road is being built in bits and pieces and sudden sections of it greets you. I guess eventually they will connect the gaps but for now long stretches of hard pack earth suddenly faded from view to appear as a mound again in the far distance. We often cycled on the new hard packed earth but had to dismount often as sections of the road had been dug up to place necessary drainage systems, an afterthought it looked like, and as a way to deter motorists from pock marking the yet untarred surface.

We proceeded to soon find a board proclaiming the road as being built with the authorization of the Mongol Ministry of road under Chinese labour contract with consultation from an Indian "Technocrat" firm and due to be complete in Oct 2008. It was a fine sight to see that in Oct 2009.
We met a pair of Danish anthropologists soon after. The Gobi may be one of the harshest deserts with little chance of seeing people for miles but so far it was a little party every few days. A day before Sainshand we'd met young mongol geologists sampling the area for Uranium for French company Areva. They couldn't contain their excitement and revealed they had tapped some some vast resources. We arrive in Ulaanbaatar to be greeted with news that the french nuclear giant had just signed a humongous deal with the govt. I have a feeling the road work will progress and there'll be a shiny highway zipping through the Gobi for rapid transport to the mines. The Danish pair were also studying mine worker migrations especially that of the Chinese into Mongolia.

Mare's Milk

Except in places where it was extremely deserted we were sure to have a nomad or two drop by even if their tent was at least 5 km away. You'll never catch a nomad without a horse and binoculars in these parts and they employ both seriously. This evening's camp brought us two young visitors from the nearby encampment. We stayed close to a pile of side by the road for some wind shelter. After the usual round of hello and sign language banter they left us to return with a gift of a huge bottle of airag which we'd read was fermented mare's milk and one that required getting used to for the gut tremors it induced. They insisted we gulp it as it was good for health and strength for our legs. It was more sour the the sourest butter milk I've had and as fat as the thickest yogurt. We were polite and drank our best. It wasn't unpleasant and we didn't have runny guts for more than one sitting but it made us slightly wary. The next day's camp brought more visitors and this time a 2l bottle of it. We decided if Chinggis had this it couldn't be bad. Our guts fared better this time but the burps were nasty.

One more painful day of cycling and we hit Choyr, the town where all sympathizers we met promised we would find a tarred road all the way to Ulaanbaatar. We did. Stocking up in the town that was yet another dusty outpost but well stocked despite it's shanty town look. The tar was of beautiful quality. Well laid and even but things couldn't be perfect. The wind decided we shouldn't get spoilt. A straight on strong headwind sprang up. Straight from Siberia it looked like with the wind chill factor involved. We persisted and made 60 km that day while in ordinary conditions we could have done an easy 80 considering the several downhill slopes. With the road came more traffic and less places to hide from view. The grass here was greener and consequently with more nomads. Ced worried about being plied on with more airag insisted on trying to distance ourselves from the gers but realized it was futile. Luckily we were spared of visitors till the next morning. No airag but just a big slobbery happy puppy dog. And to think the first emergency phrase in the book is "hold the dog".

60 km run the next day and we're 120 km from Ulaanbaatar. The wind blew relentless again. Tired. cold and miserable we decided to call it a day by 4 and camp by the only wind shield we could see. A half finished wall in the middle of nowhere. Wonder what it was being built for but it was our saviour that evening. Another pleasant encounter came our way as we saw another cyclist coming the opposite way and looking for shelter as well. We invited him to our wall. Hang was a Korean and had made the 120km from Ulaanabaatar that day. He did have the wind on his side but we couldn't help but feel a little low knowing it would take more than one more full day of cycling for us. But as always, it was great to swap stories with another cyclist, the first we'd met in Mongol.

Packing up and biding bye the next day we started what would be an easy but gradual continuous climb towards UB. The landscape began to change some and we saw our first trees in a long long time. The day's work brought us to the highest pass around. At a little over 1700m it was modest but with the desert chill, good enough to respect. We camped at the top deciding it was going to be our last night out in a long time and it also had been awhile since we'd been in 3D landscape.

More wind more push the next day and final climb we could see the beginning of UB. And it was huge. With the tremendous emptiness around, I didn't really expect to see the vast concrete conglomerate that is UB. It is still a small city in comparison to let's say even Chinese cities but coming in from the vast wind swept plains the sight was a little overwhelming. We maintained our position for awhile taking in what we were descending to and where we planned to spend some time if things go alright. We'd been on the road for 8 months (5 in China) crossed 8523 (.5 to be precise) km and we didn't mind a break to reflect and sort out the significance of our journey so far. We paused awhile by the river Tuul as well. If we had friends in UB we would have called them and demanded a welcoming committee with a wild bash to follow but it felt just as good quietly watching the river flow beneath us from the bridge we were on. We suddenly realized it was the first flowing water we seen since China. We'd arrived where we set out to and now it's up to the road and dear God above to decide where next.

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Photos

The crossing
under the little rainbow we go....

When you reach a fork....
take it. This one's for Dundee.

Kids are always cool...notice the range of faces
in Orgon

An ovoo (Mongolian: овоо, heap) is a type of shamanistic cairn found in Mongolia, usually made from rocks. Ovoos are often found at the top of mountains and in high places. They serve mainly as religious sites
...and sometimes as in this case vodka bottles

Sometimes rocky but we'll see it through
...a bit like the hymn

A good day's cycle deserves a good din din
No noodles for us

The Godi trans-siberian...
Not exactly but just to show there're more trains than trucks and they sometime hoot a Hi!

Comments

[Béatrice LINARES]

Hello!! Nous nous sommes rencontrés brièvement à Xiahe, un soir au Yousth International Hotel, j'étais en voyage avec mon fils et vous nous avez raconté votre voyage qui nous a éblouit. Et ça continue, à la lecture de votre blog!! C'est un vrai bonheur de vous lire, votre voyage est riche et passionnant, les photos font rêver!!! Je ne comprends pas toujours tout, mon anglais n'étant pas terrible, mais les mots ne sont pas toujours nécessaires!!!! Continuez à partager votre voyage, là bas et ici, c'est un régal!! Béatrice

[baruk]

'd like an ulaan bataar post...the cold and snow and wall and frozen noses and all...